The evolution of Twitter from a hub for news and memes to a legitimate communication tool for public figures and officials has allowed constituents and those interested in politics to get direct and intimate access to leaders. But still, once in a while, Twitter can get weird.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T.X.) liked a tweet from the pornographic account @SexuallPosts earlier this month. The like set the internet on fire, but it also helped define the use of the “like” function on Twitter.

I didn’t watch the video — thanks for asking — but according to the Washington Post, the tweet consisted of a two-minute sexually explicit video. In non-technical speak, Cruz liked a hardcore porn video on a hardcore porn Twitter account, which is pretty unprecedented from a sitting member of the U.S. federal government.

Cruz and his office have publicly blamed an unnamed staffer for the mishap. I’m not here to speculate which scenario actually took place, but I’ll say this: Like most senators, Cruz presumably isn’t the most tech-savvy guy in the world.

This wouldn’t be the first time an anonymous staffer was blamed for a social media scandal. And in Cruz’s own words responding to the incident: “Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms.” Let’s leave it at that.

But this internet moment also reveals something about social media that hasn’t been discussed extensively: What does a “like” on Twitter really mean?

Andy Mendes | Digital Design Editor

Twitter likes are relatively new to the platform. They came by surprise in November 2015, replacing the star-shaped “favorites” that had been around since the site first launched. Though the change was mostly a cosmetic one, it left the Twitter community in a strange place. Favorites were historically more of a hot commodity than likes are now.

As anyone who’s ever had a middle-school crush knows, there’s a difference between being liked by someone and being considered their favorite. Shifting favorites to likes brought a change to Twitter’s interactive functionality overnight, and it still hasn’t completely settled.

Now, likes have become a way to evaluate others on social media — and in a different way from retweets.

Syracuse University public relations professor Regina Luttrell said the role of likes on Twitter is still evolving and being redefined.

“The action of (favoriting) or liking something on Twitter can be unclear,” Luttrell said in an email. “If I’m heading out the door but see something that may interest me, I like it so I can come back later, essentially bookmarking it. Other times, I may like the tweet, but not enough to retweet to my followers because it may not be relevant to them.”

Retweets are more straightforward in purpose than likes, Luttrell said, because retweets indicate that a user believes their followers would find the information useful.

So if retweets are a public expression of one’s interests and beliefs, likes are a slightly more personal version of that. Since likes aren’t included in a user’s timeline like retweets are, they feel more private.

I’ve always said the best way to get a sense of what a person is really like is to look at their Twitter likes. And if Ted Cruz was indeed the one to like this tweet, we might have gotten an unprecedented look into the mind of the senator.

Social media sites have, from the beginning, been used as a tool to judge and evaluate others and their values in a way that doesn’t involve personally talking to them. As the Ted Cruz tweet shows us, likes can be used as a way to look into others’ lives in a way that public methods like tweets and retweets don’t allow for.

Brett Weiser-Schlesinger is a senior newspaper and online journalism and information management and technology dual major. He can be reached by email at bweisers@syr.edu or on Twitter at @brettws.

Published on September 24, 2017 at 8:49 pm